Climate change as metaphor

One thing just struck me. While the climate crisis (and the eco-crisis in general) is real, I sometimes get the impression that the establishment claims to believe in it mostly for metaphorical reasons. The climate crisis is an emerging modern mono-myth and is really a metaphor for the establishment´s own systemic crisis. “The world goes under” really means “our system is collapsing”. Which, of course, is true. Fans of John Michael Greer can make the tie-in to the progress/apocalypse dichotomy here.

But there´s more. At least in Sweden (a nation or ex-nation in which the cognitive dissonance of the chattering classes must be especially severe), what struck me the last two years or so is how incredibly *lazy* the propagandists of the System have become. Logically, the chattering classes should repudiate all pessimism and start to call for *massive* investments (private or public, depending on your nominal partisan affiliation) in nuclear power, electrification, copper mines, or even bio- and geo-engineering. And while such articles have of course been published in the Swedish media, they are nowhere near the level you would expect of a confident triumphalist establishment. This stands in stark contrast to the period 2015-18 when the media at the top of their lungs made coordinated propaganda in favor of open borders and, (more briefly) #metoo.

Instead, the establishment is promoting Greta Thunberg as a kind of ersatz “solution” to the climate crisis. Greta has usually avoided explicit partisan statements, but I think it´s obvious that she is a left-wing radical, perhaps a budding eco-socialist of some kind. In other words, not the kind of person the establishment should promote. The mainline newspaper Dagens Nyheter has even published material from virtual doomsday prophets. Add to this more general statements about the old world order being kaput, and a pattern is emerging. In Sweden (that´s Sweden for crying out loud) the pundits no longer believe that Trump can be impeached or that he will lose the election. The negative reactions to the Suleimani killing are not those of a European ruling class confident in its alternative geopolitical strategy for engagement in the Middle East, but rather those of a cowardly and sickly lot deadly terrified of war, and therefore ready to give Charlie whatever he demands (except nuclear weapons, but wait another five years…).

This bizarre combination of exotic activism, “leftism”, apocalyptic pessimism, cowardice in the face of an expansive religious theocracy, and neo-liberal BAU is not what you would expect from an establishment in ascendancy. It´s not even what you would expect from an establishment in decline, fighting (perhaps desperately) to ensure its survival.

I say they are demoralized.

Tired of winning yet?